Written by The DailySkew on 01 September 2010
A USA Today poll in May 2010 revealed that a whopping 92% of Americans believe in God. This poll, like many others of its ilk, is very misleading. First of all, what does the word “believe” mean?
to have a firm religious faith
to accept as true, genuine, or real
to have a firm conviction as to the goodness, efficacy, or ability of something
to hold an opinion : think
Okay, so that’s pretty certain about something.
And what does the word “God” mean?
I mean how faceless is that word- it’s not a even a name.
Better questions would be: “Do you believe in the Creator God in the Old Testament, Jesus Christ, Allah, Hindu Gods, or other gods?”
“Do you know and follow all the rules of your religion?”
“Are some rules less important than others?”
“Do you consider yourself practicing?”
“Do you worship your god or gods?”
“Do you believe your god or gods watch over everything you do and how you feel?”
“Do you believe your god or gods watch everyday world events?”
“Does your god or gods influence everyday life?”
“Do you believe in an afterlife?”
“Do you believe your god or gods will punish people who have broken their rules?”
You see just saying “I believe in God” is totally meaningless. People’s conceptions of God are much more important and relevant. America claims to be a religious nation, but just look around you…we are surrounded by filth, ignorance, hatred, desires, corruption, and selfishness. It’s all over the world.
And some of the biggest perpetrators are those who actually attend places of worship.
Yes folks, intolerance, bigotry, gossiping, and apathy go against your god.
Not understanding the point of your sacred books or taking words and paragraphs out of context is wrong.
Feeling superior is wrong.
I always think about how one of my best friends named Arnold Roberts has a wife that won’t let him speak to me because she thinks I’m a Devil Worshipper because I don’t buy the Company Line that the Christian Right has sold us our entire lives. His wife goes to church all the time and her family are gung-ho baptists. But when it comes to acceptance, forgiveness, or tolerance, there is none.
92% of Americans believe in God?
I call bull on that one.
You people need to shape up. If you believe in God, then based on all of your religious books, you will be taken care of. So why are you complaining about MONEY or even DEATH?
If God does exist, He’s not happy, and it wouldn’t surprise me if 99% of you burn in Hell.
I’ll see you there…
Here’s a secret: you can walk out of Hell any time you want.
But you won’t.© TheDailySkew | Do Americans Believe in God Poll 2010
Tags: acceptance, afterlife, Allah, america, Devil, faith, God, Hell, Hindu, ignorance, Jesus Christ, Testament, USA, worship
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Written by The DailySkew on 01 September 2010
If you can get wholesale shoes, you can make money online via online auctions. This is actually a popular method for resellers. I was at the post office this week, and saw a man with dozens of packages to be sent. He looked at me and smiled: he said they were shoes that he acquired below retail price, and now he is selling them to bidders online.© TheDailySkew | Making Money With Online Auctions
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Written by The DailySkew on 26 August 2010
I started playing Dungeons & Dragons when I was a little kid in New York in the 1980′s. Loved it. I made my mom buy me all the guidebooks, game modules, figurines, novels, and Dragon Magazines. As I blogged about before, Dungeons & Dragons is THE backbone of the fantasy genre of video games, novels, movies, and card games. Granted it was inspired by Lord of the Rings and mythology, but the bulk of its specific character classes, monsters, spells, and stories have been ripped off so much that they become accepted components of fantasy.
Back in the 1980′s the Christian Right was THE special interest group that influenced the MEDIA, lobbyists, and public opinion. Every decade has some special interest group that affects change. Ironically the Christian Right has generally lost its power since President George W. Bush, and are now a frustrated minority. But back then, the anti-D&D stigma came from a Christian freak named Patricia Pulling, who lost her son to suicide in 1982. She went on a lawsuit spree, suing her late son’s school and TSR, the publisher of D&D. She started a major campaign that was picked up by the MEDIA, and reported as fact: D&D was:
“a fantasy role-playing game which uses Demonology, Wicca, voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy, child molestation, suicide, assassination, insanity, sexual perversion, sodomy,prostitution, Satanism, gambling, barbarism, cannibalism, Sadomasochism, Desecration of Christianity, Summoning malevolent Spirits, Necromancy, Satanic divination and other strange immoral teachings.
This stuck with parents and teenagers. Even before 1982, some reporters would distort the truth about a teen crime, and blame it on the role-playing game. The first known case was 1979, when James Dallas Egbert III got lost under steam utility tunnels. Various fictional books and even a made for TV movie (with a young Tom Hanks- I remember that one) pretty much blacklisted D&D as a youth corrupter and anti-Christian game which distorted reality and fantasy. It was like marijuana.
The final nail was a 1988 murder case, in which every news channel reported that Chris Pritchard killed his step-dad and wife “Dungeons & Dragons style”.
Anyway, as a kid I was always into books about the occult, supernatural, gods, magic, and monsters. Heck, we all know the Bible has all that stuff in it, too. So when my Russian friends in Brooklyn introduced me to the fantasy world of Dungeons & Dragons, I was hooked. I loved the level of detail, rules, level advancement, personalities, and game world, created by The Architect, the late Gary Gygax.
Here’s a little secret about Dungeons & Dragons:
it’s no more evil than playing Worlds of Warcraft online or Final Fantasy on your video game system or watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It’s just that back when it first came out, a bunch of friends getting together and…rolling dice…and being creative…and talking about new concepts and using niche words no one had every heard before (Hit Points, Armor Class, Magic Missile, Wand of Orcus, Portable Hole, and thousands of more) parents couldn’t relate and saw it as being odd, if not left out of the club. Most players had a high IQ and were creative. Yes, I mean nerds and/or sensitive people. Perfectly harmless. Yeah, every once in a while some teenagers would bring weed and blast heavy metal music. That stuff happens in 2010, too, and without Dungeons & Dragons.
Yes, playing Dungeons & Dragons was not a wholesome religious activity. Neither is playing video games, watching TV, or dozens of other neutral entertainment activities we do. I know that Christian parents try their best to protect their children and to provide wholesome activities that try to promote the Word of Jesus, but it’s just so idealistic and gullible to think Dungeons & Dragons was a cult, ritualistic witchcraft, or Satan worshiping.
Yes, there were demons in Dungeons & Dragons. So what? Demons are in every form of entertainment. It wasn’t like you could choose to play as a demon; you had to kill demons. Yes, you can choose to be evil in Dungeons & Dragons, but there were consequences. What an innovate concept for a game. Seriously.
Dungeons & Dragons is chess on steroids. Dungeons & Dragons is storytelling. Dungeons & Dragons is a game.
Did Dungeons & Dragons influence me? Oh, heck yeah. Both good and bad. Just like everything else. Like tools, games are neither good or bad. It’s how we process and apply them that matters. It’s individual responsibility and parental responsibility. Why couldn’t parents actually READ the game book and rules if they were afraid so much? I’m sure they would ask….”So…where’s the part where you make a pentagram and goat’s blood to conjure Satan?” Well, there was never a part like that.
TSR had to clean up references to demons and devils in later editions, but they have been back since 2000, showing that Dungeons & Dragons has outlived 1980′s Christian Right fundamentalism.
The 700 Club may still be around…Mike Huckabee has large following…but…in truth the Christian Right’s time has passed, and they hate that fact. They have always been skewed, and could talk the talk, but not walk the walk.
Spreading fear, panic, and making incorrect judgments- Jesus must have been so proud, huh?
For those children of the late 1970′s and 1980′s who played Basic Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, they entered a fresh fantastic world of imagination. Even today, groups get together and play, although thanks to the internet and online games, it is mostly a digital experience. Dungeons & Dragons was a social experience that even shy or reserved kids could play. It gave them a chance to act out different aspect of their personalities, and live their male or female fantasies by acting our their deepest desires.
Even today when I read my old gamebooks and manuals, I am just blown away at the writing, background stories, and aura of magic and mystery.© TheDailySkew | My Take on Old Dungeons & Dragons Controversies (Satanism, Suicide, Murder)
Tags: childhood memories, Dungeons & Dragons, fantasy genre, fantasy role playing game, fictional books, special interest group, teen crime
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Written by The DailySkew on 26 August 2010
It is funny: the concept of reselling wholesale items has always seemed nebulous to me- almost as vague as someone telling me he is in the “import/export” business. Today I learned that there are companies in the wholesale water filter industry-you can buy high volume water filter distribution products and sell them at retail price. Commercial water distribution is one of those hot nice markets I’ve never heard about until now.© TheDailySkew | The Concept of Reselling Wholesale Items
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Written by The DailySkew on 25 August 2010
I’ve had some rants about why I made the decision to cancel Facebook. My, does time fly- I wrote my How To Cancel Facebook article back in April! Do I have any regrets? No. It is cool to be out of the Matrix. All of my reasons still stand. So here’s my Facebook update:
Only 5 people actually contacted me. Five out of over 100. All 5 were extremely close to me anyway, and communicate with me daily via e-mail or Yahoo Messenger, or *gasp* I actually see and speak to them in real life.
Everyone else- and that includes family members- either have no idea that I left, don’t care, or think I blocked them (I guess) because they have made no attempt to contact me. So much for the definition of “Facebook Friend” or “friend” in general.
I still have the open challenge for any of my former 100+ Facebook friends: CAN YOU USE GOOGLE?
Because if you type “Damian Hospital” in Google, I am entry #1, and all over Page 1. Maybe everyone I know from the past uses Yahoo or Bing, in which the search engine results suck. Or perhaps- they don’t know about Google. It wouldn’t suprise me.
Before you think I’m being self-centered, understand this: people keep signing Damian Hospital’s Classmate’s profile to try and contact me, which I can’t even see because Classmates is a paid service. All they had to do was freakin’ type DAMIAN HOSPITAL in Google. Why anyone would still be a paying member of Classmates is beyond me, as well.
At the end of the day, I can count my real friends on one hand, and my family on two hands.
If you are a Facebook drama queen, maybe you should count your own, too.
****
Facebook WILL become MySpace in a few years.
****
Instead of wasting precious time socializing about Facebook and building your own egotistical shrine, why don’t you BLOG, PODCAST, or make some VIDEOS to actually contribute your original thoughts. Yeah, I know being on FB and blogging is not mutually exclusive, but the bulk of my former FB friends had no personal websites or blogs.© TheDailySkew | Quitting Facebook: An Update
Tags: classmates.com, damian hospital, facebook, lost classmates, old classmates
Posted in internet | 4 Comments »
Written by The DailySkew on 25 August 2010
The first person I know who had a digital camera back in the late 1990′s was my co-worker Mike. Since then, I have always been interested in reading about camera reviews. Back in the day camera megapixels were a huge topic of debate, as well as video camcorders, and taking pictures in poorly light space. Camera battery life continues to be a hot topic for consumers who are shopping for digital electronics.© TheDailySkew | Digital Camera Technology
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Written by The DailySkew on 24 August 2010
Okay, first things first: I’m not selling anything here. I’m also not going to share any of my SEO or Internet Marketing techniques and methods. My goal here is to protect you from being conned by some “IM Guru”, SEO software, and from losing sleep over Google “finding you out” for doing something. But I also want to reinforce the philosophy that internet marketing is not spamming.
There has been a lot of talk and panic the last few years on some of the most popular internet marketing forums about the Google Sandbox, Google Slap, and Google Ban. There are numerous “accepted” internet marketing and SEO techniques that are black hat (dirty tricks, violations of Google’s Terms of Service, hacking, illegal) or grey hat (borderline, mixes legal and illegal techniques), so newbie IM’ers can easily follow the Phony Guru (Big Shark, King Shark, Fake Guru) and make some costly mistakes.
If you’re wondering why Google is the self-appointed Internet Cop, and why masses of IM’ers are so concerned about Google, it’s because most people use it when searching for something. Yahoo and Bing’s traffic can’t compare to it. And when you consider that being ranked #1 for a given keyword or phrase can generate hundreds of thousands of dollars for you, depending on what it is, you can imagine how people are scrambling for an edge- just like athletes and steroids. In effect, the Phony Guru is a drug dealer selling some e-book, link magnets, backlinks, software, proxy servers, or methods.
So how do you know what’s legit and what’s not?
Read Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. That is your bible. It outlines Google’s Quality Control when it assigns Page Rank. It is Google’s Best Practices. It is White Hat SEO. That doesn’t mean you ignore the various legit SEO methods, because frankly if you just have a website that focuses on your cooking recipes or you are writing a diary, more than likely your site will get lost in the shuffle in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) if you do not promote it, even if you follow Google’s rules to the tee. But Step One of your journey must be to read and follow the guidelines.
Let’s talk about Google Sandbox: Fact- it has not been confirmed by Google. The Sandbox Effect may be part of Google’s algorithm. Basically, you create a new website, promote the heck out of it, but the site still ranks low in the search engines. Or perhaps you started off hot, but now your traffic has decreased, and your Page Rank is still 0. Others say your site is being reviewed by Google. There are many exceptions to this. LESSON TO BE LEARNED: Season your website. Write ORIGINAL CONTENT. Don’t sell stuff. Actually bring something to the table for site.
Let’s talk about the Google Slap or the Google Penalty: Bottom line, if you have engaged in any violations of Google TOS/Guidelines, you can get Slapped (Page Rank 0 or totally kicked out of their index or worse- any site you own based on WhoIs will get penalized). This is where Google comes off like the Googstapo. LESSON TO BE LEARNED: Obey the Webmaster Guidelines, never SPAM, and perhaps the most practical advice- don’t put all of your eggs in one basket (only one website). Diversify in case you did break the rules.
When does Google actually penalize your Name and every site you own? You really have to be a master spammer for that to happen. It doesn’t happen if you commit minor infractions or even if you get involved in a major one. Again, you have to be creating a bunch of junk sites, link schemes, and perhaps use black hat methods to get Super Slapped. There has been a growing paranoia about this happening for accepting paid text links, but it’s not true.
There are so many dumb theories out there, spread by Phony Gurus to hold you back. You see Gurus are always 2 steps ahead of you anyway, and only give advice that won’t harm them. The “new trend” you read on The Warrior Forum is old hat to the King Sharks. Additionally, actually performing the reverse of their advice would NOT cripple your competition (such as getting Google Banned for creating an incorrect Link Wheel- has anyone tried to create the wrong backlinking method to their #1 competitor to see what would happen? NO, because it’s insane to give your rival backlinks. How does Google “know” who is creating the links?)
If anyone has any specific questions, I’ll be more than happy to answer any questions you may have about blackhat, greyhat, and whitehat SEO.
The most valuable LESSON TO BE LEARNED: SEO and website promotion require you to be patient, obey the rules, and not get addicted to the quick and easy schemes to make money online. SEO is one case where the tortoise does defeat the hare. The good news for me, is that most aspiring SEO marketers (my competition) opt for the short cuts, and don’t care about staying power to grow a franchise. The other bit of good news is that even though there are thousands of good marketers, millions of them don’t get IT. The latest Google update- called May Day, devalues Page Rank 0 link farms, and rewards authority links.© TheDailySkew | Google Sandbox, Google Slap, and Other Internet Marketing Myths
Tags: black hat, Google, marketing techniques, page rank, seo techniques, TOS, website
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Written by The DailySkew on 24 August 2010
Talk about a Google trend that totally bottomed out: Obamacare. The media really pushed us to the brink with the widespread panic, but for now at least you can go ahead and continue your life without worrying about it. The bottom line is that for the time being the average citizen can continue on, get a high quality Blue Advantage insurance quote, get covered, and not feel threatened by a new federal coverage.© TheDailySkew | Obamacare is No Longer a Hot Topic
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Written by The DailySkew on 23 August 2010
Dr. Richard Hoffman speaks: Are you more intelligent than an albino raccoon? For those of you who don’t get my meaning, I am referring to a trip I took to Fort Myers in April 2009 with DailySkew co-founders Damian and Tony and their families. We were at an animal refuge and saw an albino raccoon running in circles. He lived with a regular raccoon in a cage. There was a bowl of water, and a ladder. The albino raccoon walked very quickly in the same path over and over again…it was a crazy scene…and it reminded me of unhealthy behavior and bad habits in humans.
Fast fact: Most people deal with stress (most appropriately called distress, but people don’t search for that, so I will dumb down my language for Google) in unhealthy ways. I’ve already explained why. Anyway, it’s a NEWSFLASH, but you are actually compounding the negative impacts of stress with bad habits that you fall back to when dealing with stressors.
As soon as a stressor enters your life, you automatically fall into the cycle of self-inflicted suffering. Here are some common ways people try to manage their stress levels…when reading this, I ask you: are you better than the albino raccoon?
Emotional eating due to stress: Yep, I’m under stress and have low self-esteem, so lemme eat some more and get even fatter, and increase my hypertension. Mmmmmm…yummy…pass me the pork chop.
Drinking alcohol due to stress: Boy, I had such a bad day and work, and my wife is such a #@!$%@, so lemme head over to Moe’s Tavern and get drunk. MEANWHILE, you’re messing up your organs, brain, and relationships, not to mention DUI.
Buying things due to stress: Oh, I am unemployed and so stressed out. So let me use my credit card and buy things for a self-esteem boost! Yep, my family and I had a bad year, so we’re going to ROME. Wait a minute! You mean, I will actually feel worse after I buy these items and the “pick me up” feeling goes away?
Smoking cigarettes due to stress: Hey you got a light? I’m stressed out and smoking calms me down. But what else does it do? Let’s see…lung cancer? Check. Heart disease? Check. Bad breath? Check. Very expensive and addicting? Check. Cause more stress, just like everything else on this list? Check.
Smoking weed due to stress: Hey bro, pass me a joint ’cause I am so @$#$@ stressed out, dude. Hey guess what? Smoking marijuana WILL calm you down for 4-8 hours! It can calm you down SO much, that you will mess up driving, your job, and something called RESPONSIBILITY. Heck, if you smoke every night, there is NO WAY you can do anything productive. And here’s my response to people who always attack my Just Say No message: YOU CAN DO WHAT YOU WANT BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, BUT AS SOON AS YOU STEP OUTSIDE OF YOUR HOUSE, YOU ARE ENDANGERING ME WHEN YOU ARE STONED. FOUR TO SIX HOURS, MMMMKKAAYYY?
Watching pornography under stress: Can’t take it anymore. Lemme rub one off real quick while watching porn. Problem with that is you will view women as sex objects and pornography is like a gateway drug. You can tear yourself up if you love Jesus. One day you’re watching Lily Thai with two guys and other girl, and then you find yourself in a seedy Oriental massage parlor spending $200, while your marriage is going down the tubes. Next thing you know you’re on craigslist looking for gay guys.
So there you have it…can you BREAK THE CYCLE..can you BEAT THE ALBINO RACCOON?© TheDailySkew | Dealing with Stress and Bad Habits: Are You Better than an Albino Raccoon?
Tags: animal, Fort Myers, Jesus, Lily Thai, RESPONSIBILITY, richard hoffman, ROME, stressor
Posted in psychology | 3 Comments »
Written by The DailySkew on 23 August 2010
You know your social life is on the downward trend when you do not receive any holiday invitations anymore. Seriously. Back when you were in your social prime- you were involved in family events, you had more friends than than fingers, and you actually made phone calls, and you received invitations all the time in the mail. Now? You are lucky if you receive a mass e-mail from your third cousin from your step-dad’s side announcing that some baby was born.© TheDailySkew | You Know Your Social Life is on the Downward Trend When…
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